I have a text file that has strings on each line. I want to increment a number for each line in the text file, but when it reaches the end of the file it obviously needs to stop. I've tried doing some research on EOF, but couldn't really understand how to use it properly.

Note that the form is the same for all of them: check the result of the read operation; if it failed, then check for EOF. You'll see a lot of examples like:

while(!feof(stream))
{
fscanf(stream, "%s", buffer);
...
}

This form doesn't work the way people think it does, because feof() won't return true until after you've attempted to read past the end of the file. As a result, the loop executes one time too many, which may or may not cause you some grief.

For now, I would ignore feof and similar functions. Exprience shows that it is far too easy to call it at the wrong time and process something twice in the belief that eof hasn't yet been reached.

Pitfall to avoid: using char for the type of c. getchar returns the next character cast to an unsigned char and then to an int. This means that on most [sane] platforms the value of EOF and valid "char" values in c don't overlap so you won't ever accidentally detect EOF for a 'normal' char.

A valid character value from getchar can never overlap with EOF on any conforming platform, because characters returned by getchar are in the range of unsigned int (therefore non-negative), and EOF must be negative.
–
cafDec 2 '09 at 22:48